THE CHALLENGE.
When life hands you lemons, do you make Lemonade?
Or do you produce a stunning broadcast commercial, design a multifaceted paid media schedule, and execute a scavenger hunt that sends a small Alaskan community into a lemon-hunting frenzy?
This was our approach to MAC Federal Credit Union’s “Lemonade” Campaign.
With Lemonade, our client desired a campaign that spoke to a segment of its audience with less than stellar credit. They wanted these individuals to know that factors like limited credit or bumpy financial history shouldn’t disqualify people from positive banking opportunities. At MAC, they understand that everyone’s financial journey looks a little bit different — and this resulted in the campaign tagline: When life gives you lemons, MAC has a recipe for that.
And our recipe for delivering this campaign went like this:
STRATEGY.
The Lemonade Campaign combined a strategic mix of creative video production, multi-channel paid media placements, and innovative marketing activations to help MAC spread its message far and wide. The campaign also coincided with the credit union’s grand opening of its latest branch in a new market, and this resulted in a number of collaborative partnerships with local businesses to increase brand awareness and earn community buy-in.
To kick off the campaign, we scattered toy lemons in common landmarks around each of their designated marketing areas—Wasilla, Fairbanks, and Palmer—and created social media videos that contained hints as to their various locations. These videos were released daily, and anybody who found a lemon was eligible to bring it into MAC and exchange it for $200 of seed money: no strings attached and no questions asked.
We placed a series of roadsigns around Palmer that included one to two words on each that said: Caution! Lemon’s ahead: Don’t Panic | MAC Federal Credit Union | Has A | Recipe | for that!
ORGANIC AND PAID MEDIA PLACEMENTS.
TIK TOK & REELS
The Lemon Hunt videos proved to be perfect content for a platform like TikTok that’s video-centric and caters to a younger crowd. Additionally, we hopped on board the “Drink Tok” trend, and created TikTok videos featuring unique (and delicious) lemonade-based drink recipes.
DIGITAL AD CAMPAIGN
We built a robust programmatic ad campaign spanning Paid Social, Google Search, YouTube, and Streamed TV and Radio.
TV
Our TV campaign features a young girl realizing her piggy bank is empty, so she proceeds to build a lemonade stand and serve a lineup of riders on a popular ATV trail in Palmer. The commercial wraps with her pulling a red wagon into the branch to deliver all of the coins she earned from her lemonade stand, as she claims “I’m gonna need more lemons.”
RADIO
Our radio placements reinforced our overall tagline: when life gives you lemons, MAC has a recipe for that.
PARTNERSHIPS.
During our market research, we learned that Palmer’s Bleeding Heart Brewery launched their own initiative calling on the Palmer community to help light the water tower through donations. We approached the owners of Bleeding Heart with the idea to create a limited edition lemonade based drink called “MAC n’ Ade.”
Bleeding Heart was quickly on board for the collaboration, and it didn’t take long for Anchorage-based Market Juice to chip in with the pomegranate lemonade drink base. We designed branded cups, coasters, and other marketing materials for Bleeding Heart in which they combined with their slush puppy machines to create the Palmergranate Mac‘nade. All proceeds from the drink sales went to lighting the water tower.
